


Emmagen

by goshawk



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-14
Updated: 2010-05-14
Packaged: 2017-10-09 10:53:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/86497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goshawk/pseuds/goshawk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Athosians have left Atlantis, but Teyla remains. An introspection.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Emmagen

**Author's Note:**

> This piece is an attempt to address why the show calls her the Athosian "leader" when she's never shown actually, y'know, leading. I figured a mistranslation was the only thing that made real sense. Also I got annoyed with the way the show ignored Athosian culture until they needed it to introduce some tension.

_I am Teyla Emmagen, daughter of Tagan, successor to Torren Emmagen._

Teyla held the words of her lineage close as her people left Atlantis for their new home. She did not worry about the hardships of creating a fresh home from the wilderness seen there. Once, they had built cities like those on other worlds, fought and died for them, but the terrible losses of the Great Attack had turned Athosian hearts against such life. Her people had survived the Wraith over the centuries by wandering, by shunning buildings of stone and wood, by being like the animals that moved with the seasons and not like the trees that dug deep roots. Home was where her people were; Athos was the community they kept together. In time, if the settlement proved viable, they would call this world by that name.

Or not, since the Earthers had written down the name it now held in the records they were so fond of keeping and so loath to alter. With the path she was choosing for her people, there would be little hope of leaving the tent of Atlantis' care, and thus little hope of keeping their thoughts as easy to move as their home. And that was the point of the knife between her and Halling, the cut that had led him to gather their people and leave.

The Earthers called her the Athosian "leader". Teyla knew the dangers of the translation the Ring of the Ancestors provided, the way nuance and shading shifted or was lost. It was why she spoke the languages of the four major Athosian trading partners fluently, and knew key words in a half-dozen others. Trade was her people's way of life, and misunderstandings of nuance or shades of meaning in barter could mean starvation in a hard winter. She had known that the way the Earthers meant "leader" might be different. Every world had a different way of distributing power, a different word for who held what kind. It had not seemed important, when it meant that they rightly dealt with her people through her, as all new people must deal with the Emmagen until they were known to be true. But now, she began to understand how much the Ancestors' translation had failed them.

There had been much confusion when she had told the Earthers that Halling would be taking her people from this city, and that she would let them go without her. They thought she had lost control of the "leadership" because of their suspicion, as if Teyla were like Elizabeth and her people's departure were as if the people of Atlantis had suddenly stopped following Elizabeth's direction. Even John, ordinarily so perceptive in matters of power and where the lines of it ran, thought that she and Halling were two halves of a "command team" such as he and Elizabeth were, and that this departure was a shift in the balance of power. He did not understand. Perhaps he could not. Any attempt to discuss the spiritual necessities of life with these Earthers was met with uncomfortable evasion, scathing cynicism, or a bewildering polyglot of beliefs that all had different names and seemed to have little impact on the way their culture was guided. More confusingly, most of them insisted that it was _private_.

Teyla was not the leader of Athosians, she now knew; not the way the Earthers meant when they said the word. That was Halling. He had won the right by acclamation and by election of the Elders, the position acknowledging his calm guidance, his just decisions, his capable handling of most problems, and his devotion to the wisdom of the Ancestors. He was a good leader for her people, and Teyla was glad that he had been so chosen.

Teyla was the Emmagen, which the Earthers seemed to believe was a name just like John's "Sheppard" and Elizabeth's "Weir". These were names that they passed to their children seemingly as a matter of course, though Elizabeth had tried to explain to Teyla some conflict over naming children for fathers rather than mothers. Teyla's father had been the Emmagen before her, awarded the name by his mother, Tallin Emmagen, when he had passed his initiation in the forests - young to be so named, but the Emmagen blood had run true in him. Torren had faced much greater opposition in naming Teyla his successor as a small child, but everyone had agreed - as time passed and she constantly pushed the boundaries, questioned everything she was told, and displayed more curiousity than was entirely normal - that her father had been right to name her Emmagen. Then he had died in a bad raid not a year after her own initiation, and his foresight had been proven beyond doubt as her people relied on her, young as she was, to guide them.

Perhaps she should tell the Earthers to call her that - the Guide of the Athosians. The task of the Emmagen was to see beyond the demands of life as an Athosian. The leader must immerse himself - or herself - in the life of Athos, in the demands and necessities it presented. Halling could not always contemplate the deeper histories, or commune with the Ancestors; his charge was more immediate. Hers was the burden of guiding the spiritual course of her people. Usually it was in choices concerning how many children should be allowed to be born that year, or whether they should stay to give aid to Wraith-struck strangers or flee to safety, or if new trade alliances should be made or old ones strengthened.

But then there came people again in the City of the Ancestors - strong people, and good people, she believed, though they were strange. And the choice that had been laid before her was the greatest since her many-times-great grandfather, Chanar Emmagen, had led the remnants of his people from the ruined cities into the forests, and told them not to look back. The decision lay before her people: whether to yolk their destiny to these...inheritors of the Ancestors' city, or to bid farewell and leave, to try to survive the awakening of the Wraith as they had always survived the Wraith; through moving, hiding, running. As Emmagen, it was her choice to make - but the leader had to make a choice also: to support the Emmagen, or not.

Halling chose not. He could not gainsay her decision, could not reject her status as Emmagen without far greater transgression, but he could make clear his feelings, and had. Halling was a believer in the Ancestors as the spirits they had become, watching over her people and offering their wisdom through meditation and dream; this city was the heart of the Ancestors' once-great dominion, their first and last abode. He resented its occupation by outsiders, resented their proprietary treatment of things that were holy and the cavalier way they spoke of the memory of the Ancestors. He had followed Teyla to Atlantis, taken their people back within the walls of a city for the first time since Chanar Emmagen, on the heels of a raid and the miracle of people stolen back from the Wraith. But now these interlopers cast suspicion on him, on his people, implied that _Athosians_ could be spies for _Wraith_. It was too much, and in taking their people and leaving for the mainland, he told her clear as speaking is, _if this is your decision, then it is for you to follow the trail it leads._ Teyla understood. She even thought he might be right - she was made to step outside what is was to live as an Athosian. For her people, this path might be too harsh.

But while it was for Halling to embody the Athosian way; it was for _her_ to look beyond. And what she saw when she looked around herself was a city that was important not just as a shrine to the spirits of the Ancestors, but as a reservoir of knowledge and power left by the _people_ the Ancestors had been. And these Earthers, she knew in her heart, were the key to its unlocking. They were strange, ignorant of the hazards she knew like breathing, startlingly naive, and fiercely optimistic. Teyla looked into the part of her heart that made her Emmagen, and she knew that her people _must_ merge the course of their destiny with them. For centuries beyond count, they had learned resignation as the natural prey of the Wraith, learned to remain strong and Athosian and accept their losses with stoic fatalism. These Earthers denied fatalism, they refused to accept life as this galaxy had known it for centuries beyond count, they found ways to steal back their lost, to strike at their enemies, to kill the Wraith.

Teyla Emmagen looked at the Earthers and she saw what the Athosian people should be - had once been, if the histories were true - and could be again. So she made the choice, when Halling left, to stay here and teach these Earthers what it meant to live in this galaxy, and to learn how to believe it could be different, and knew that her decision was correct.

But as the Ring of the Ancestors became quiet behind the last of her people, and John left her to her contemplation of the quiet empty room, she found it a hard and lonely truth.

_I am Teyla Emmagen, daughter of Tagan. I am the successor of Torren Emmagen. I choose hope for my people._


End file.
